If we turn to another wife of the Paston family, a little earlier in the century, Margaret Paston, whose husband’s name also was John, we find the same attitude even more distinctly expressed.  She always addressed him in her most familiar letters, showing affectionate concern for his welfare, as “Right reverent and worshipful husband” or “Right worshipful master.”  It is seldom that he writes to her at all, but when he writes the superscription is simply “To my mistress Paston,” or “my cousin,” with little greeting at either beginning or end.  Once only, with unexampled effusion, he writes to her as “My own dear sovereign lady” and signs himself “Your true and trusting husband."[12]

[12] We see just the same formulas in the fifteenth century letters of the Stonor family (Stonor Letters and Papers, Camden Society), though in these letters we seem often to find a lighter and more playful touch than was common among the Pastons.  I may refer here to Dr. Powell’s learned and well written book (with which I was not acquainted when I wrote this chapter), English Domestic Relations 1487-1653 (Columbia University Press).

If we turn to France the relation of the wife to her husband was the same, or even more definitely dependent, for he occupied the place of father to her as well as of husband and sovereign, in this respect carrying on a tradition of Roman Law.  She was her husband’s “wife and subject”; she signed herself “Vostre humble obeissante fille et amye.”  If also we turn to the Book of the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry in Anjou, written at the end of the fourteenth century, we find a picture of the relations of women to men in marriage comparable to that presented in the Paston Letters, though of a different order.  This book was, as we know, written for the instruction of his daughters by a Knight who seems to have been a fairly average man of his time in his beliefs, and in character, as he has been described, probably above it, “a man of the world, a Christian, a parent, and a gentleman.”  His book is full of interesting light on the customs and manners of his day, though it is mainly a picture of what the writer thought ought to be rather than what always was.  Herein the Knight is sagacious and moderate, much of his advice is admirably sound for every age.  He is less concerned with affirming the authority of husbands than with assuring the happiness and well-being of his dearly loved daughters.  But he clearly finds this bound up with the recognition of the authority of the husband, and the demands he makes are fairly concordant with the relationships we see established among the Pastons.  The Knight abounds in illustrations, from Lot’s daughters down to his own time, for the example or the warning of his daughters.  The ideal he holds up to them is strictly domestic and in a sense conventional.  He puts the matter on practical rather than religious or legal grounds, and his fundamental assumption is “that no woman ought ever to thwart or refuse to obey the ordinance of her lord; that is, if she is either desirous to be mistress of his affections or to have peace and understanding in the house.  For very evident reasons submission should begin on her part.”  One would like to know what duties the Knight inculcated on husbands, but the corresponding book he wrote for the guidance of his sons appears no longer to be extant.